Week 7: The Pessimistic Meta-Induction and the No Miracles Arguments
Notes General Realism vs. Antirealism The realism debate happens on 3 axes. It is an ontological (Is there a mind-independent world?), an epistemic (Can we know anything about this world?) and a semantic (Can we say true things about this world?) debate. It is usually about the unobservables. Realists say that there are unobservables, we can know things about them and we can say true things about them. Logical positivists Logical positivists believed that only observation statements are meaningful, so anything about unobservables would be meaningless. It is not just that sentences about unobservables may be wrong, it is that we cannot even formulate meaningful sentences about them, so we could never say true things about them. Constructive empiricism (CE) According to Van Fraassen and constructive empiricists, science should aim to formulate true sentences only about observables but posit empirically adequate claims and not true claims about unobservables. Empirically adequate means that it conforms to our observation. CE is agnostic about the ontology of unobservables and acceptance of a theory consists of believing in its empirical adequacy rather than its truth. CE may be the most sensible form of antirealism, but the empirical success of science needs some explanation, hence NMA. The No Miracles Argument (NMA) the no miracles argument put forth by Putnam is an argument that says there are no miracles, and it is not a cosmic coincidence that our observations confirm the results of our science. It is not a coincidence on a cosmic scale, that science gets things right. It gets things right, because the world is the way science describes it So science must say true things about unobservables, those unobservables must exist, and we are able to gain knowledge about them. Pessimistic Meta Induction (PMI) The PMI states that we should not believe that we will ever refer to unobservables/make true statements about the world, given our past failure to do so. In the history of science, it always turned out that our theories are not making true claims about the world, it would be rather crazy to think that it will, in the future. While there may be things in the unobservable realm, it is certainly impossible to make true claims about them or to know anything about them. We would also never know if we did. Structural Realism (SR) So realists should find something that survives theory change, some claim that has been made by science and is not refuted by new observations. SR states that it is the structure of the world that we were able to say true things about. It is the structure, so the relations between unobservable, that we got right. Certain equations in a theory describe these relations, that may get new interpretation, but the equation itself survive theory change. An example that has been used many times by SR is the Fresnel's wave equation for light. Fresnel thought that light was going through ether, a medium that transports the wave. However when it turned out that ether does not exist, light behaved according to Fresnel's equation, and it get a new interpretation; light still being wave like without a medium. Types of SR There are two main branch of structural realism: Epistemic and Ontic. Epistemic SR claims that the only thing science is able to say true things about unobservables are structures, the relations between unobservables, while being agnostic about the existence of unobservables. Ontic SR claims that unobservables do not exist, only the relations among them do. That is relations without relata. Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR) There are two main branch of ESR: Lecture There may be considerable overlap between this section and the one above. I thought that it may be good when revising to have them as separate, as maybe you only care about what is in the lecture or only care about the topic but not the lecture. Basic reading This section should be objective. It would be nice to see summaries of the readings, this way we can interpret everything to ourselves and do not have to rely on other people's notes, without having to read every reading again. Further reading Same as for Basic reading. 3 questions Answer all questions, this should be discussed in pairs at least, feel free to suggest changes or additions even after it has been uploaded. Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Essays It would be nice to see essays taken apart, making the sections clear, or even to put suggestions here. This section does not have to be an essay, rather suggestions for arguments and parts for answering the question. Complete essays can be uploaded to the drive corresponding to the wiki. First essay Second essay